


Betrayal, Fallen

by hailingstars



Series: Febuwhump [14]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Disregards Infinity War, Febuwhump, Peter Parker has the Venom Symbiote, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), reunited avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 12:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17787350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: When Peter becomes compromised with the Venom Symbiote, Steve helps Tony make the right decision on what must be done about it.After Peter is freed, he has to figure out how to get out of bed with the weight of Venom's sins pressing down on him.





	1. Betrayal

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so the thing is, I know today is supposed to be fallen, but I'm switching them up for this two-parter. Today is Betrayal, then tomorrow, for the second part of this, is fallen. Hope you guys enjoy!!

“Spider-Man stand down. Do not approach.” 

The command grated at Peter’s nerves as he watched the final asteroid smash into a building on the lower east side of Manhattan. It might’ve annoyed him a bit less if it’d been Tony dishing out the orders, but it hadn’t been his voice coming through his coms. It’d been Steve’s. Peter had heard enough of his voice to last a lifetime. 

Through PSA’s at school, through old Captain America propaganda they were forced to watch in history class, and now, at Avenger’s team meetings. Peter especially hated this. When Mr. Stark recruited him for the team, it’d been to help him stop Steve. Now he was stuck taking orders from him, like some sort of soldier. 

That was the thought that propelled a few petty steps forward, towards the crash site, where smoke rose up and indicated to the rest of the world that space had once again invaded New York City. 

A black liquid oozed from the bottom of the asteroid, and Peter watched as two separate puddles of the strange substance tickled away from the building, away from the rock it seemed to come from. It moved, back and forth, as if it were more than just liquid, but actually alive. 

Peter took a couple more steps forward, amazed, and even more amazed as liquid stood. It called to him, somehow, and he reached his hand out, wanting to touch, wanting to see for himself what exactly this stuff was. 

“Peter Parker! Get away from that!” 

Peter turned and smiled at Mr. Stark as he landed and removed his faceplate. His orders weren’t orders. They sounded more like the exasperated, worried cries of a father. 

“What?”

“Black space goo cannot be trusted until it’s tested,” said Mr. Stark. “And they say you’re a genius.” 

“Don’t you just think – it’s just, sort of cute?” asked Peter. Mr. Stark eyes flickered the black goo that was still just a puddle.

“No.” 

Mr. Stark’s eyes were still on the lifeless goo on the ground, and the rest, well it happened in a few seconds. Peter stood, staring, at black liquid, then that liquid attacked him and became him, disappeared through the seams of his suit, soaked inside his skin. When Mr. Stark looked back at Peter Parker, he wasn’t just Peter Parker anymore. 

He was Peter and Venom and that was a name that popped into his head from nowhere, like magic. Like black magic. 

“Where did it go? That other one?”  
“Oh uh,” said Peter. He scratched his head and made a big deal about looking around. “I dunno, it just slipped… away.” 

Peter couldn’t explain in words, not even to himself, why it was so important that Mr. Stark didn’t know he and the sludge were now one person, that it was running through his veins and inside his head. Such a stupid secret to keep, and he was about to spill it, but he was reminded, by a voice in his head, that this was the sort of raw power that even Tony Stark would try to strip away from him. 

So he didn’t tell him, he watched as Mr. Stark looked all around from black space sludge, but he must’ve thought it wasn’t very important. By the time the rest of the team joined them at the crash site, he was done looking. 

“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Steve, once he was off his motorcycle. “That asteroid was projected to be carrying dangerous substances. I said to stand down.” 

“You did?” asked Peter. “Umm, sorry, my com tech must be broken.” 

Steve narrowed his eyes at him, not quite believing and definitely not trusting, but that was okay. Peter didn’t need Steve to trust him as long as Tony did. Steve gave another order, something he did far too often, to contain the puddle of black sludge, and Peter glared at the back of his head, imagining what it’d be like to slam it into a brick wall, or run over it with the tire of his own motorcycle. 

*

“What are these, anyway, Mr. Stark?” asked Peter. He held up a pair of the cuffs, then threw them back down. They crashed on the workstation, and they clanked against the metal. 

“Restraints for the super-powered,” Tony told him. “Figured with all these mutants running around, it’s about time we develop a way to get some kind of control over them.” 

Tony didn’t miss the frown form on Peter’s face. It was a rare sight, especially in the workshop, where usually he’s grinning and chatting and asking a million question at such a rate Tony would never be able to answer them all. Lately he’d been quiet, and if Tony didn’t know him better, he would say he’s also been calculating. 

“Oh, so like if Rogers loses his mind again,” said Peter. “We’ll have something to stop him with.” 

“Since when do you call Steve by his last name?” 

Peter shrugged and looked back down at the restraints on the workstation. Distain was evident, and Tony wanted to put a stop to it. 

“Kid,” said Tony. “You gotta give the old man some slack. The team is back together. All is forgiven and all that, alright?” 

Peter checked the watch Tony designed for him, then leaped from the chair he sat in. “I gotta go, Mr. Stark.” 

“Okay…” said Tony, but before he could turn and tell him goodbye, the boy was already gone, the chair he vacated spinning slowly in place. 

It left a bad taste in his mouth. He didn’t like the idea of Peter cutting their time together in the workshop short. They were partners in crime, the two of them, always thinking up new ways to annoy the other Avengers, always thinking up new tech upgrades, and the workshop was entirely too mundane and quiet without him there. He tried not to be hurt by his sudden departure, but that became harder and harder as weeks passed with no word from Peter Parker. 

Tony didn’t receive any texts made entirely out of emojis. He didn’t get emailed any memes he didn’t understand. He worked alone in the workshop without answering any questions or fielding any advice out high school situations. The few times Tony tried to contact him, he was met with no response. It left him with one conclusion. 

Tony must’ve done something wrong, something to drive him away. 

“He’s a teenager, Tony,” Pepper told him, when he expressed these concerns to her at dinner. “He’s probably just going through a phase. Teenagers are known to bit distant from their parents, from time to time.” 

Parent. Tony was terrified of that word. He was afraid he didn’t know how to be one, in the right way, the way that Peter needed him to be. 

It wasn’t until Tony flipped on the news that he understood the reason Peter was ghosting him. Ghosting. A word he learned from Peter, but also a weapon he never thought would be used against him. There was a lot of talk about Spider-Man on the news. All nonsense discussions, full of lies, but the news feed on his phone was filled with worst headlines. 

SPIDER-MAN GONE DARK

SPIDER-MAN TERRORIZES QUEENS RESIDENTS

WHEN WILL THE AVENGERS STOP SPIDER-MAN?

He didn’t click on any of them. None of them were true. Not his kid. His kid was perfect, pure, innocent, and probably completely wrecked by these rumors. Tony made plans to go visit him at his apartment, but Steve got to him first. 

He approached him in a bright hallway in the Avenger’s compound, wearing a frown. 

“We need to talk about Peter,” he told him. 

“We’ve all been victims of the press, Cap,” said Tony. He dismissed him and kept walking. He wouldn’t entertain the idea that there might be something wrong with his boy. 

“There’s surveillance footage of Spider-Man throwing a civilian off a roof and to his death,” said Steve. He stayed planted where he was. 

“Footage can be doctored,” said Tony. He didn’t stop walking. 

“He’s been compromised, Tony,” said Steve. This time his voice boomed through the hallway, and this time, Tony stopped. He turned. “By whatever came to earth on the asteroids that day. Bruce has been studying it. It’s a parasite, and it needs a human host.” 

Tony remembered that day, remembered seeing Peter stretch his hand to danger, and then suddenly, how that danger disappeared in what seemed like the blink of an eye. 

“I know it’s hard for you to see it. You’re close. He’s like a son to you,” said Steve, and Tony began to open his mouth. It was close that word again. Parent. “Don’t try to deny it. We all see it, and it’s good. That’s what he needs right now. A father who can do what’s right for him instead of what’s easy.” 

The word father was possibly worse than the word parent. 

There was another long pause, one in which Tony ruminated in the fact that he didn’t like it when Steve started to make sense, but more importantly, he didn’t like it that Steve knew something was off with Peter before he did. 

“You still monitor his patrols?” asked Steve. 

“Baby monitor protocol is always on.” 

It was meant to protect the baby, not to catch him committing murders. 

“We need to take a look at that footage,” said Steve. “To see how bad this is.” 

Tony nodded. It was a dark, dark world when he agreed with Steve, but he supposed, that if Peter was injected with an alien parasite, he couldn’t ignore it forever and once they were watching the footage of Peter’s recent patrols, Tony was thankful Steve had been insisted. He watched on a computer screen as Peter threw a man from a roof, as he choked someone else, as he made people beg. 

“That’s not Peter,” said Tony. He stopped the footage. He couldn’t watch anymore of it. 

“Like I said, he’s been compromised. He’s not driving the car,” said Steve. There was another pause, before he said, “That’s your kid, so it’s your call.” 

The next course of action seemed simple to Tony. He’d kill the parasite, rescue the kid, even if they had to exorcise that same kid while he cried and kicked and screamed. 

“Let’s bring him in.” 

“I’ll get the team ready,” said Steve. He stood and left the room, wasting no time.  
Tony’s eyes flickered back to the footage, then to the prototype restraining cuffs still sitting out on his workstation. He supposed it was time to test them out, he just never thought he’d had to use them on his kid. 

*

Tony stood on a building, warring with himself, about what he was about to do, or rather, what he was allowing the Avengers to do. Clint sat with his bow positioned and ready on the building across from him, ready to shoot at Tony’s fucking child. 

In these moments it wasn’t the word parent or father that Tony feared, it was the possibility that his reason for being labelled those things might be ripped from the planet or swallowed whole by a parasite. 

Steve was down below, and he slowly approached Spider-Man while he was in the middle of torturing some guy, while he was holding him against a brick building by his neck. That was hard to watch, too. Tony didn’t like seeing Peter as anything other than what he was, bright and pure and innocent. This version of Peter didn’t have a trace of those qualities. He held a squirming man to the building, tightening his grip on his throat as Cap continued his slow, steady approach. 

“Peter,” said Steve, and his voice, once again, was booming. “Put him down.” 

“Why should I?” asked Peter. “He’s a criminal. An awful person, and I bet he cheats on his taxes, too. Who cares if no one sees him again? I’m sure not his family.” 

“Peter Parker would care,” said Steve. “Spider-Man would care. He’s the hero of Queens, who works with the police, and sends people to jail. He doesn’t operate like this.” 

“He grew up.” 

“We liked him better the other way.”

“That’s too bad,” said not-Peter. He tossed the criminal to the side and turned to look at Steve head on. “He’s not coming back.” 

“We’ll see about that,” said Steve, then gave the signal. 

Bucky appeared from the opposite side of the alley, and it made Peter turn, so his back faced the wall and he could keep an eye on both soldiers. Tony forced himself to stay put. Logically he knew they were double-teaming Peter to bring him in without harming him. His instincts were different. They screamed at him. They begged him to fly down there and protect his kid from his teammates. 

When Natasha appeared, on Steve’s side of the alley, the screaming got louder. 

“Oh wow,” said Peter. “I’m flattered. The whole team came to see me? Where’s Clint?” He looked up and shouted into the sky. “Clllinnnttt? Where are you? Don’t you dare shoot me.”  
He turned and leveled his unreadable stare, thanks to his mask, back at Steve. 

“Don’t make this hard on yourself, son. I know you’re still in there somewhere. Last chance to come quietly, before things get ugly,” Steve told him. 

“Where’s Tony?” asked Peter. He looked up to the sky again, and Tony bucked behind a pillar. “Tony? You’re really letting them do this to me?” 

Steve took that as Peter’s answer, and the three Avengers charged him. Peter had them in strength, but the other three had him in skill and within minutes Steve had him in the correct position, a position that gave Clint a clean shot. The arrow sliced through the air and straight into Peter’s back. Steve released him from the hold, and Tony’s child sunk to his knees, then fell flat on the concrete. 

The tranq was supposed to knock him out cold, but they must’ve gotten the calculations wrong, or that parasite changed Peter’s metabolic rate, because he was still squirming on the ground when Tony landed with the restraints. He kneeled beside him, placed a firm hand on his shoulder to hold him still and ripped off his mask. 

Wide, brown eyes stared up at him. Scared eyes. “Please. Tony. Steve’s trying to lock me up. Don’t let them do this to me.” 

Tony thought about relenting, about giving into those eyes, but then it hit him. That this worthless parasite was using his kid’s eyes and his voice and his fear to manipulate him, but he’d gotten one thing wrong. Peter wouldn’t call him Tony even if he asked him to. 

He looked into those eyes, and he clicked the cuffs into place. There was a flash of real betrayal, real hurt, as Peter looked up at him and struggled against his restraints, as if Steve had been right, and Peter Parker was in there deep down, feeling everything, but not capable of understanding of it. 

“Sorry, kid. You’re grounded.” 

He let Bucky haul Peter to his feet and march him away. It felt less wrong than it did before. Now he had a mission. A clear path. He was going to get that parasite out of Peter, and he was going to kill it. He was going to get his boy back.


	2. Fallen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annndd this is done. Tomorrow I'm back to normal one-shot!! I hope everyone is having a great Friday!!

Peter’s screams were loud and desperate. The worst part, for Tony, was not knowing if the parasite was letting him scream, or if the was the parasite making him scream in further attempts to manipulate the three men standing behind the glass, on the other side of the medical holding room. Tony watched as Peter, completely strapped down from his arms to his feet, scream and sweat and struggle to break free with every ounce of his Spidey strength.

After a few minutes with no improvement, Bruce adjusted the temperature in the room, increasing the heat by several notches. Flames and sound waves, Bruce had discovered, were the only ways to kill space parasites. The three of them hoped heat was enough to take the place of fire, but Tony was beginning to have his doubts.

“It isn’t working,” said Tony. “Any hotter and we fry the kid.” 

As if on cue, Peter let out a spine curling, long winded wail. Sweat tickled down his face, and his brown hair was matted with it.

“If it wasn’t working he wouldn’t be screaming like that,” said Steve. “It’s dying.”

“Or Peter’s dying.” 

They both looked at Bruce for his opinion, but his expression was unreadable. “We can try the sound waves.”

Tony had already vetoed this idea. With Peter’s super sensitive hearing, they couldn’t be sure if exposure to such sounds would do lasting damage. Tony wanted to avoid that at all costs, but not at the cost of Peter’s life.

The screaming stopped, and all three pairs of eyes snapped back into the medical room. Peter’s head, the only part of him not restrained, was straight up, and his eyes had turned black. He began beating his head into the chair he was strapped to, over and over, and watching it made Tony’s anger boil over. 

That parasite was dying, but it was trying to take Peter with him, or at least, do as much damage to him as he could in the process. That was it. That was enough. It was time for that thing to go. 

“Do it,” Tony told Bruce. “I’m going in there, and when I put my face plate back up, crank up that heat and blast the speakers.”

He disappeared into the room before either man could object, and when Peter saw him, the blackness disappeared from his eyes and the regular, doey brown came back. 

Tony placed his hand on his forehead, holding it down and preventing the parasite from tormenting him any further. A scared whimper escaped his lips, and Tony had to remind himself that it wasn’t Peter. Not really. He could still talk to him, though. He had to believe he was still in there, listening and hanging onto every word.

“Just relax kid,” said Tony. “This is gonna hurt, but when it’s over, you’re gonna get to be you again, okay?”

“Please. Tony. Don’t let them do this to me.”

They were repeated lines, and they were ineffective.

Tony flipped his faceplate back up. Peter began to shake under the straps holding him, under Tony’s hand, then went still. His eyes shut and quickly flew back open to reveal huge, gapping black eyes. Peter’s face was flickering away, and Tony almost relinquished his hold on his forehead as it morphed into something menacing with fangs.

It was lasted a few seconds before Peter’s face became his again, and a cloud of dark mist flew off his body all at once. It dove to the floor, returned to the dark goo it once was, and slithered away until it met the corner of the room. Tony was quick about forcing into a containment box, and once it was secure, he looked back at Peter.

He was sweating, breathing hard, and staring glassy eyed back at Tony.

“Mr. ‘tark,” he said. “I’mm I’m ‘orry.”

His eyes rolled shut, his head fell against the chair one last time, and blood trickled from his ear.

* 

When Peter woke up, he couldn’t hear anything. They communicated with him through dry erase boards, by nodding, and by gestures. A couple of days later when his hearing came back completely, Mr. Stark was the most relieved. Peter sort of wished it wouldn’t have. He deserved to lose something, at least, after all the bad things he did, after all the loss he caused. Due to his advanced healing, his body came out unscratched.

His mind, however, was crumbling. 

Every member of the Avengers was sympathetic. They visited him while he laid in recovery. Mr. Stark was the most frequent, but Peter didn’t feel like being much of a host. If he replied, he kept it to one word. More often he just stared out the window, or at the wall, while whoever insisted on keeping him company sat in the chair next to his bed and talked and talked and talked.

Five days later they extracted Venom from his body Peter was allowed to return home to his apartment. He silently slipped passed May on his way to his bedroom, closed the door, crawled into this bed, and didn’t get back out. May’s pleas for him to eat or get up or take a shower floated in the air but didn’t pass through the protective fuzz around his mind. He lay, nearly comatose, asleep or zoned out, for more days than he cared to count.

By the time Mr. Stark came back to visit him, he’d lost track of the days altogether, and wouldn’t have been able to point to the date on a calendar.

He heard his door open, heard the sound of Mr. Stark’s anxious breaths and his hurried footsteps. 

“Jesus, kid,” he said. An incredibly blinding light filled the room as he heard Mr. Stark pull back the curtains. “Would letting some light in here kill you?

Maybe, probably, and Peter expressed this by groaning and flipping on his side, so his back was facing the window. Mr. Stark walked back around to the other side of the bed. He pulled up a chair, and he sat down. 

“No one blames you for what happened, you know,” he said. Peter did know, and that wasn’t fair. “So you gotta stop blaming yourself.”

That was easy for Mr. Stark to say. He hadn’t been hijacked by a parasite, and if he had, he wouldn’t have allowed it to hijack his body and go on a killing spree. He was headstrong, and Peter wasn’t, and now people were dead because he was too weak to prevent it. 

“There was a press conference,” said Mr. Stark. “And the public has made been aware that it hasn’t been Spider-Man behind the mask.”

Peter didn’t respond, and Mr. Stark did one of his now infamous sighs.

“Please say something, kid,” said Mr. Stark. “I miss hearing your voice.”

There was a pause, in which Peter tightened his jaw, afraid that he might actually start talking and the relief that would bring him. He didn’t deserve it, so he kept his mouth closed, kept Mr. Stark from seeing the tears forming in his eyes. 

Mr. Stark stood, left the chair and left his room, only temporarily. He came back seconds later with a big, brown paper bag.

“I brought you some food. May said you weren’t eating, and please, just, try to eat something, okay? For me, and for your aunt. We’re worried.”

Mr. Stark left his bedroom, and Peter waited until he heard his car pull away to get up and retrieve the bag. He looked inside and found an enormous amount of French fries and three cheeseburgers, from the same place they once sat at for hours while Mr. Stark helped him write a paper. 

It’d been about his hero, and that, of course, meant it was about Mr. Stark.

He forced the food down. He could do it for May and for Tony, so they wouldn’t have to watch him waste away. 

Steve was the next Avenger to invade his space. He came into his bedroom, uninvited, and sat in the same chair Mr. Stark had. He didn’t talk, though. Steve just stared at him. That irritation came back. Not the kind of rage that wanted to see Steve’s head get ran over, but a mild annoyance that was quickly flushed away when Peter realized that was a giant gap between his thoughts and Venom’s. 

“Are you just going to stare at me?”

“I figured you were probably tired of having people talk at you,” said Steve.

“Staring’s better?”

Steve shrugged. “Got you to say something.”

Peter felt tricked, but talking, using his voice, he found it felt good, like the way he felt after he forced himself to eat the food Mr. Stark left for him.

“Congratulations,” said Peter. “You can leave now.”

“You should get up and get outside, take a walk, get some fresh air. It’s a beautiful day outside.”

The curtains and the blinds were still pulled from the other day, and Peter automatically felt his eyes drifted to the window. He was right. It did look like a beautiful, spring day. Birds were chirping, and Peter heard them.

He put his eyes back on Steve. “You all should just give up on me.” 

“Can’t do it,” said Steve. He leaned further back into the chair. “You’re part of the team, and you don’t give up on your team, or on your friends.”

A long time ago, when Peter was younger, and not an Avenger, he would’ve worshipped the idea of someday being called a friend by Captain America. Child Peter had not fantasied about this day like this, though, with him lying in a bed, refusing to get up to do anything other than use the bathroom. He imaged his child self would be very disappointed in this, in all of this. 

Especially his time with Venom.

“I killed innocent people,” said Peter. It was a statement meant to scare Steve away, but the man sitting in the chair didn’t flinch. “I remember what his body sounded like when it hit the ground, the way he screamed on the way down and begged before – I tried –“ Peter broke off, swallowed, then continued. “I tried to stop, but I wasn’t… just wasn’t strong enough.”

Steve stayed silent, but Peter continued with his confessing. It felt good. The more he confessed, the less he owned, the more he started to believe the words Mr. Stark spoke at that press conference. It hadn’t been Peter wearing the mask. Peter had been the mask, but now he was just Peter, and once he was done listing all Venom’s crimes, he was lighter.

There was just one last atrocity to admit.

“Oh my god,” said Peter. “I… I called Mr. Stark by his first name.” 

“Wow. I didn’t actually think that one would make the list,” said Steve, then leaned forward. “You didn’t do any of those things. It wasn’t you.”  

Peter wasn’t completely ready to believe him, but he was starting to separate him and Venom in his head. They weren’t the same.

Steve pulled a protein bar from the pocket of his jacket and threw it at him. “Eat that. And we’ll see you Saturday, bright and early, for training session.” 

He didn’t tell him he would show up, but he didn’t tell him wouldn’t, either. Satisfied with the lack of protest, Steve stood and walked to the door. Peter stopped him on the way out. 

“Steve,” he said. “I’m sorry I stole your shield.” 

“I’m sorry I threw a bus at you,” said Steve. “Never again.” 

 “Well, unless an alien parasite takes over one of our bodies.”

Steve laughed, but shook his head. “That won’t happen again, either.”  

He disappeared from the doorway, and Peter waited until he heard the roar of his motorcycle from outside to unwrap the protein. That time he ate for himself, so he would have the strength and the energy to get out of bed. Getting up would be saved for the next day, but in the meantime, Peter found his phone, he found a funny Iron Man meme, and he sent it on its way. 

It was the best way for him to let his mentor know he was okay, or at least, on his way to being okay.

Mr. Stark replied in seconds. _Nice. Glad to have you back, kid._


End file.
